Author
Topic: Pans or screens (Read 1667 times)

I've been banned from using my pizza stone. The pizza crust is great but I always end up spilling some when putting the pizza in the oven and the resulting smoke and mess has me in the " no pizza zone".

I just have a regular oven that gets to 525°.

I guess I have to switch to pans or pizza screens. Any recommendations? Pros and Cons?

Pan = fried crust. Golden brown delicious, like Sicilian style: easy to top with LOTS of toppings, very heavy in the belly.Screen = same as making it on a stone. You can even put the screen on the stone. The screen just helps a bit to keep the shape and gets rid of the sticking to the peel issue. You might get less oven spring than directly on a stone. It's a tradeoff.

Instead of giving up on your stone, why don't you work on your dough and peel technique? Make up some practice dough just to play with. Top it lightly and launch into a unheated oven. If you can recover it and launch it again, you are more than ready for a real bake.

Instead of giving up on your stone, why don't you work on your dough and peel technique? Make up some practice dough just to play with. Top it lightly and launch into a unheated oven. If you can recover it and launch it again, you are more than ready for a real bake.

Good suggestions above. Also consider making a smaller diameter pizza which would be more manageable.

Avoid making an extremely thin crust pizza or applying too heavy of toppings until you sharpen your peel handling skills.

Prep the peel by first dusting lightly with flour. Then add a heavier layer of corn meal.(In between pies scrape off any wet spots, and repeat this step!!!!)

Have all the toppings ready and assemble the pie within a minute or so.

Before loading pie to stone, hold the peel with pie and shake it to ensure it's moving freely.

Load peel to stone by angling it downward and allow the tip of the peel touch the stone at the target point on the stone. Shake it gently and once the rear edge of the pizza touches the stone pull out the peel.

I hope that helps.

I think we've all had spills or other mishaps while loading a pie to the stone but it's only something that happens once in great while if you follow all the above suggestions.